Bruce Gerencser’s sixth post in his My Journey series on how he came to apostacize covers ground we explored in his first post. Via a clever analogy of the Church as Mistress[OK, I admit that his likening his weekly counselling sessions to getting a weekly VD shot was a bit much], he explains how what we often call church ministry consumed his life, his relationship with his family and ultimately affected his health, both mentally and physically.

Unfortunately, none of this was ever necessary. As I stated in my maiden post:

“God never intended for any minister [or any of the laity for that matter] to sacrifice their families upon the altar of church business or even ministry. Speaking of those who oversee the churches, the Bible plainly states the following necessary qualification:

“One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)” 1 Timothy 3:4-5

This brings up an interesting insight. If you cannot manage your own household, you cannot be expected to manage the household of God; therefore, a man’s ministry to his family comes before his ministry to the church. It has to, because it is the barometer of his fitness for ministry. If his family is a wreck, he’s not fit for ministry, so how then can he be expeced to sacrifice his family on the altar of ministry??

The answer is, of course, that he can’t and that he shouldn’t. Yet so many Christians, clergy and laity alike, fall into this trap, where they suppose they are putting God first by placing their families after ministry. This should not be so. The very fact that the church is called the family of God is because God patterned his church after the family, the very first institution He established.

Bruce strained his marriage, his relationship with his children and his family’s well-being for a noble purpose. But it was wrong. God cares about the family. God is not Molech that He should desire the sacrifice of our children! Ministry together and mutual sacrifice for a greater cause is one thing, but if we put church before God, we’ve got our priorities out of whack.”

It’s very easy to get God and church backwards, but so many people do it.

This brings up the issue we explored in our last post, whether folks who abandon the faith were ever saved. I think that Bruce’s post gives us a bit of insight into the problem. In our last post, I stated that:

“Being a Christian is more than adherance to a lifestyle or a commitment to doing Christian things and saying Christian things. It’s a relationship: You know God and He knows you, intimately.

Here’s the rub: Bruce [and I’m sure countless others] will say that they truly knew Him whom they believed, but if we really knew Him and He knew us, how could we ever think to leave Him? If we truly knew Him and loved Him as we claimed, how could we not endure anything, overcome anything, do whatever we had to to stay in the relationship? The answer is that Bruce and I never knew Him. We knew about Him. We certainly thought we knew Him. But if we had truly known Him [as I know Him now], we could never have left.”

But we were passionate about the ministry, we were totally devoted to ministry for Jesus, right? And here we gain further insight into the problem: While we thought we were in a life-giving relationship with Christ, we were really in a life-sucking affair with Church. It’s very easy to do. We get so busy doing ministry that we miss the fact that the object of our devotion is Church. Instead of the church being the body of believers working toward a common goal of discipling the world and one another, it becomes the end-all and be-all of our faith.

Want further proof? OK, do you invite folks to church or do you invite them to follow Christ? Do you hear about someone’s problems and cluck that they need to be in church, or do you say that they need Jesus? Do you need to be coaxed and guilted into reading your Bible, praying, doing good works, witnessing and doing devotions with your kids? Worse, is Sunday [and/or midweek Bible study] the only time you crack open your Bible, bother to pray a non-meal-related prayer, etc? Do you rely on your pastor to feed you? Or is your relationship with Christ so passionate that you can’t survive on that minimum? Do you read the Bible seekig His will for you and to learn more about your Beloved? Likewise, do you witness out of obligation or guilt, or because you can’t stop talking about one of your chief passions? Do you go to church out of guilt, or a desire to fellowship with folks who love Christ as you do?

Do you see the difference here? What we’re asking, if you’re saved, is have you left your first love for a mistress of duty, guilt and obligation? If you’re not saved, did you substitute Church or Christianity for Chirst?